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Hastings (Chief0101)

Support:

It's long been asserted - and I agree wholeheartedly - that ratings are of very limited value; what's really important is the comments. (Having come to agree with this, I worked to add comments to every game I've rated; some of them aren't very useful, but if I ever find time I will work to improve them.) The reason I agree is because it's often a negative comment that convinces me to pick up a game I'm considering.

So I'm curious - anyone else read a negative comment about a game, which caused you to buy or trade for the game?

"I feel bad about this rating. There is a lot of cleverness in this game. I admire the objective of a quick playing civ/tech tree game. They almost nailed it, but not quite.

There is a glaring problem with Uruk, and they basically ignorned it. The game has almost no player interaction, and compounding the problem, an obvious catch-the-leader failing. Furthermore, the God and Disaster cards are not targeted to fix the problem (thought that would have been a good use for them). Instead, they aggravate the rich-get-richer issues of the design. The cycle can begin from the first hand, where cards are randomly dealt, and you can end up with a good hand that accelerates your victory or a bad one. A standard first hand would have been a better design decision.

All-in-all, a disappointment. I want to like it, but the issues here won't let me."

This was enough to get me to take a chance on the game, and I'm glad I did.

No specific comment I can point to -- but the two biggest complaints on this game seem to be:

"It's not really a "travel" edition, it's just smaller." I really don't see how you could make travel Carc, and it wasn't what I needed. But shelf and table space are at a premium in several places I play.

"None of the expansions work with it." I'm not a big fan of expansions for any game. The guy who always says, "I like the old-school basic edition" -- that's me. I can be quite a curmudgeon about it -- one way I put it, "When I buy a game, I want a game, not a subscription."

Played only once (advanced version), but that was more than enough for me. The idea of a trick taking board game is an appealing one, but there needs to be more to the game in order to really work. As it stands - playing the advanced game - it's too much a matter of making a minimal placement in spaces you care about, and ideally having other players bother with their placements first. In our game, I had my 13-12-11-5-4-3 left, with no other player holding anything above a 5. I made the final six plays of the game for 16 points, and won by 18. The random distribution of bonus/penalty points is way too poor an idea to be permitted, and the scoring cards aren't well balanced. Further, _every_ space should really be worth something, to encourage competition, but they aren't. All of this was enough for me to be between a 1 and a 2 rating, and the not-particularly-functional artwork was enough for me to side with a 1.

Trick taking board game sounds great. I think your oppnents probably over bid in the early game of your one play.

These comments convinced me that Caylus is the game for me. My rating: 10!

"Total shit."

"The high ratings this game (along with "Wallenstink") has garnered only proves to me that once again the masses at BGG are delusional and the ratings are meaningless as to what constitutes a good game."

"Caylus sucks!"

"If you don't have enough of this at your job, here's a game where you serve the boss, develop "great" ideas and have them scratched out by other people."

"A boring snorefest with the worse theme ever (oh, well, if you are a rectal alpinist, you might appreciate it). Games are made to be fun! I'd rather listen to Glen Hansard than play this piece of crap again."

"This was painful to play. Too long, too dry, too boring. Too much like ACTUAL work to be fun. Watching Rabid gerbils fight to the death would be more entertaining than another night of this..."

"Four hours of pain. The emotional tenor of this game is a default level of boredom over minutia, interposed with occasional flashes of getting screwed over, which is the only mode of player interaction."

"Random resource game. I HATE it"

"Must ... stay ... awake ..."

"Seems like a fine game, but I just kind of hate it. A lot."

"Not interested in work in a box."

"Dry, dry, dry and boring, boring, boring. Oh, and slow thanks to the analysis paralysis monsters.Would rather eat a box of saltines in the desert with no water on hand than play this game again."

"I thought that I would like it, but after playing I just felt like I went through a long day in the office. Neurotic OCD bean-counters with no eye whatsoever for aesthetics will take to this one like little horn-rimmed, pocket-protected ducks to water."

"If asked I would rather play chutes & ladders then this ever again."

"Often times I feel like my brain has drained out my ears after a couple hours of Caylus."

"I would have rated it a 1 but I didn't want the hatemail from strong supporters of the game."

"The perfect game for a Geek who wants to impress someone with how smart they are."

Here's the one for me. Most of the comments I read were negatives about the length of the game, the 'downtime' while you waited for your turn, and the lack of player interaction, etc. I intended primarily to play this solitare from the start, as I figured I'd never be able to get the wife interested (and I was right about that.... )

So, let's see: Too long? I love long solitare games, I just leave them set up on the game table and play them over days or weeks.

Downtime? well, I'm the only one playing - so I guess that shouldn't be an issue.

No/limited player interaction? no problem!

The other comment I read was 'dicefest', but I personally don't have problems with dice in a game. So, in general, I don't think there was a negative comment that I read anywhere on this that I thought would actually be a negative for me.

OK, the disclaimer - I haven't actually managed to get the time to set this game up and give it a trial play, so I can't tell you if grabbing this one was a good call for me or not, though I have read through the rules and it sure seems like a game I'll enjoy tinkering with!

I guess the moral of the story is: maybe there are no BAD games, just games that don't appeal to a given person's particular tastes...

Here are some of the comments that helped me decide to pull the trigger on purchasing Android.

"Too long, convoluted and opaque to give any satisfaction""the game has FAR too many things piled on and the game takes many hours more than it should.""That was four incredibly theme-rich, incredibly over-complex, not terribly fun hours that I won't be getting back""Too long for what it is. Overly complicated""The mechanics were cool, the stories were great, and the art was wonderful. The problem is that there were so many things to learn"

Hmmm. There is an underlying theme to this. The game is long and it's complex. I like long games with depth and complexity. So I checked to see what kind of games these folks who were rating it low because of the length and complexity liked. I found another trend. Their favorite games tended to be things like Carcassonne, Race for the Galaxy and Power Grid. Basically people who like the one hour long euros didn't like the game.

One last thing. I went in and checked using BGGs stats analyzer to see how people who rated Carcassonne, Race for the Galaxy and Power Grid highly rated Android. Sure enough, they hated the game. Then I checked to see how folks who rated Arkham Horror and Descent rated the game (Two similar long games from Fantasy Flight that I enjoy) and sure enough they rated Android highly.

I bought the game and have not been disappointed at all. It has everything I want in a game. Strong depth, complexity and length. The very things that the people who didn't like it said was the reason why. So it goes to show don't just look to see what the comments are but look at who made them and what they like. You may learn as much from that as from any of their comments.